DOCTOR WHO: Sing a Song for THE RINGS OF AKHATEN and Is Clara the Doctor’s Mummy?

“THE RINGS OF AKHATEN” – Series 7, Episode 8, Episode 233 – Written by Neil Cross; Directed by Farren Blackburn – It’s Clara Oswald’s first spin in the TARDIS and she wants to see something awesome, so the Doctor takes her to see the Rings of Akhaten. They have a wonderful time looking at the seven worlds and a big pyramid and chatting with a little girl, who sings a lovely song. And then they go home. Well, not right away. Because The Plant Of Akhaten Is Like Mogo, If Mogo Was A Parasite Who Ate Memories.

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If THE RINGS OF AKHATEN were a person you met at a party, you would have a pleasant conversation with them by the buffet table in between bites of “I’m not sure what this is but it’s pretty good, isn’t it?” appetizers, and then five minutes after they left you would not be able to remember their name, and on the ride home you would struggle to remember one memorable thing they said, but you were pretty sure they weren’t from around here.

AKHATEN is the kind of episode that serves as a glue for a season. Your overall opinion of Series 7 isn’t going to be made or lost by AKHATEN but it can push it in either direction; if you like the season, a pleasant, ordinary episode like AKHATEN might be remembered a bit more fondly than if you dislike that particular series. It’s Series 7′s version of THE SHAKESPEARE CODE or THE LONG GAME or THE SONTARAN EXPERIMENT. It’s okay, it’s not overly memorable, but in a few years when you’re rewatching Series 7, you’ll probably find this episode better than you remembered it.

There’s nothing offensive about AKHATEN to me, but the memorable moments are few and far between. In fact, here they are:

One: Clara doesn’t think the TARDIS likes her.

Two: Behind the TARDIS, Clara and the young Mary Gejelh, Queen of Years, have a really nice chat, in which Clara helps Mary get over her biggest fear. We get a nice bit of Clara’s backstory about how her mother has promised to come and find her “every single time” she’s lost. What’s wonderful about the scene is not only how Clara helps the young Queen find her confidence, but just how Jenna-Louise Coleman delivers her lines. I’ve watched the scene a few times now and I’m totally in love with how she talks – she speeds up through the informational bits and then slows down for the important moments. It’s reminiscent of how Matt Smith often approaches the Doctor, to the point where I’m starting to wonder if perhaps–

CRACKPOT THEORY ALERT — CRACKPOT THEORY ALERT — CRACKPOT THEORY ALERT

– I’m starting to wonder if Clara doesn’t have some kind of connection to the Doctor.

Like … she’s his mom.

I know we already kinda sorta probably almost definitely met his mum back in THE END OF TIME, and I know that most people would rather just forget the bit in the Eighth Doctor’s TV MOVIE that the Doctor is half-human, but until it’s officially rescinded on the TV show, we have to at least entertain the theory.

What’s Clara’s signature line? “Run you clever boy … and remember,” she’s said during her “other” lives. We’ve largely taken this “boy” designation as something cheeky, but taken another way, it’s also a way to refer to someone younger than yourself. I’ve held for quite some time that ultimately it’s going to be the Time Lords that are behind all of the Doctor’s relaunched troubles. And what do we have here in AKHATEN? A Clara Oswald driven by the memory of her mother that she will always come and find her daughter, which makes it fitting if Clara then, in essence, becomes her mother when she goes to save the Doctor at the end of AKHATEN.

There’s much less romantic tension between the Doctor and Clara, or even romantic interest from Clara’s point of view than most of our previous reboot Companions, and she does, in fact, scold the Doctor quite often. With the Ponds, Matt Smith made the Doctor feel ancient, but I’m not getting that vibe from him with Clara around. I’m getting a much more school boy vibe, so far. Yeah, there are moments when he looks and feels old, but there are just as many moments where Clara is scolding him as she stands up for herself and asserts her presence in the narrative, as if she were in charge and he was the Companion. And check out his outfit during the scene where Mary sings – he’s got glasses on that look like he took them off a Harry Potter cover and he’s sitting there with his little schoolbook, explaining to Clara what’s going on.

It’s after the schoolboy glasses come off where we see the timelines collapsing into a single moment. The Doctor tells her, in the third really memorable thing that happens in AKHATEN, “Listen, there is one thing you need to know about traveling with me. Well, one thing apart from the blue box and the two hearts. We don’t walk away.” As written and played, it comes off like the Doctor is giving Clara instructions, but remember why the Doctor says this – things are going to crap with Mary, Queen of Years and the angry god, and he’s off to do something about it. And where’s Clara while this is happening?

Running behind him, demanding that they do something about it because it’s her fault.

The Doctor’s speech, in other words, is much less a statement of purpose as it is an affirmation of what Clara is already demanding they do. The Doctor’s fire is in Clara’s words, as is his tremendous sense of guilt. Now, I’m not suggesting that the Doctor only says these things because Clara wants him to say them. What I’m saying is that, you know, timey wimey, we’re in a loop here where the Doctor and his mother are reinforcing their own deeply held beliefs.

One of the reasons I like the theory being pushed by Mike Faber of Earth Station One and others that Clara is the girl in the computer from THE SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY and FOREST OF THE DEAD is that it ties back to an earlier Moffat episode. As we saw in Series 6, there’s two DOCTOR WHO narratives going on: the Moffat episodes and everything else. Steven Moffat clearly has control over everything, of course, but it makes sense that the bows he’ll tie on his DOCTOR WHO years will be drawn from his own work.

And that’s one of the reasons why I’m sure my Crackpot Theory is definitely not true – because it’s drawn from the work of others. For now, though, I’m going to stand by this theory that Clara is the Doctor’s mother because that promise by the BBC executive whose name I can’t remember that no one is going to be able to figure out Clara’s true origin. As I joked on the Earth Station Who podcast two weeks ago – that it either means the exec thinks Moffat is infinitely smarter than the audience, or that Moffat isn’t going to play fair.

Stepping outside his own little Moffat World bubble would be just that kind of swerve, and it would be fitting given that this is the 50th Anniversary year.

I’m not suggesting, either, that Clara – that any versions of Clara – are even aware of her motherhood, at least consciously, but if the Doctor’s mother could send out her own “drum beat” to herself at an earlier point in time, she could be imploring the Doctor to “remember” for the both of them.

We also know that Moffat, like Russell T. Davies before him, likes to double down on the details, and so an episode that’s overtly about motherhood like AKHATEN might also be covertly about motherhood, too, as we see the lessons of the mother passed down to the daughter and passed on to the grandson.

And what bit of info does the Doctor happen to let out in AKHATEN? When Clara asks if he’s been here before, he replies, “Oh yes, with my granddaughter.”

Round and round the timeline spins …

Heck, at the end when they’re facing down the Akhaten parasite, they even cry out of the same eye.

As an episode, THE RINGS OF AKHATEN is a lesser version of THE BEAST BELOW, as the Doctor takes his new Companion to a very alien setting where they help a kid and dangerous shenanigans ensue. AKHATEN is a thin episode, but it is quite enjoyable as far as a light snack goes. I like how they use singing to get to the emotional core of the episode, but the episode succeeds because of Clara and the Doctor’s emotional responses.

The Doctor gives a moving speech to the parasite planet about all that he’s seen (the parasite feeds on these memories), but then Clara leaves the safety of her distant location and goes running into danger and one-ups the Doctor’s speech. She gives her own emotional plea/challenge to the parasite and gives up her parent’s leaf – the leaf that blew into her father’s face that caused him to meet Clara’s mother. It’s “the most important leaf in the universe” to Clara … but maybe, just maybe, it’s the most important leaf in the universe for other reasons to, as it’s the leaf that led to Clara, and Clara is what leads to the Doctor.

When I was on the ESW podcast two weeks back, I said I was not going to get caught up in the speculation game this half-series.

Wrong.

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When he’s not talking speculating on the Doctor’s lineage, Mark Bousquet is doing some writing himself. He is the author of multiple novels and collections, including the recently released The Haunting of Kraken Moor, Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

 

DOCTOR WHO: Rycbar THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN

“THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN” – Series 7, Episode 7, Episode 232 – Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Colm McCarthy – Snog box! It’s the official kick-off for the second half of Series 7 and it’s once again New Companion Time. This isn’t the first, or even second time we’ve met Miss Clara Oswin Oswald, only this time it’s allegedly the real deal. She’s not a Dalek and she’s not a Victorian nanny. Heck, she’s not even an Oswin, yet, but just plain old Clara Oswald, living with a friend’s family and watching over the kids because their mummy died. The Doctor is looking for her by waiting in place. Which actually works. Because The Bells Of Saint John Start Ringing And Clara Is On The Other End.

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I have never driven a supercar, so what follows is a hypothetical experience.

Imagine getting behind the driver’s wheel of, say, a Ferrari F12berlinetta. The Ferrari dealership is perhaps a little worried about Frank Slade and Robin taking their fleet out for a spin, so they’ve put an inhibitor on the engine, preventing it from going over 80 MPH. This will inevitably disappoint you, because what’s the point of owning an F12 if it can’t go any faster than a beat up, 15-year old Ford Taurus?

You bring the car back to the dealer and politely tell him it’s not for you. But then later, after dinner, after driving home in your perfectly proper BMW 760Li, you start remembering how the F12 hugged the corners, how the steering was so responsive it seemed to operate on telepathy, how the pedals seemed to be part of your feet instead of separate from them. You start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, that dealership wasn’t worried about someone taking the F12 out for a joyride but wanted a potential customer to appreciate the rest of the car.

Who notices the interior when your romping down the highway at 175?

But at 85 … at 85 you’ll pay more attention to how the seats sit, and how the dashboard looks, and how the engine purrs instead of being overwhelmed by its roar. So you call the dealership back, tell them you want a second test drive, and this time when you get behind the wheel, you discover the inhibitor is gone and you get the full experience. Before you’ve brought it back that second time, you know you’ve bought it.

That’s how I feel about THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN, the half-season opener that kicks off the back-half of Series 7 and formally introduces us to Clara Oswald. I was pleased but not thrilled with the episode on its first watch but when I watched it a second time, I liked much more. The third time I liked it even better. I still don’t love the episode, but I like it quite a bit. It’s the handling and the braking and the interior that I like, though, not that roaring engine.

BELLS is a surprisingly restrained episode. With all of the build-up to Clara’s official first appearance I was expecting BELLS to hit the ground running and bury us in an avalanche of rapid fire dialogue and clever sayings and over-the-top action. Usually, that action involves running, but the trailers for BELLS promised a motorcycle so while I wasn’t expect that bike to, I dunno, drive straight up the side of a massively tall building, I was ready for some weaving in and out of traffic.

There is action in BELLS, and it’s fair to say this is much more an action episode than a horror episode, despite the arrival of new monsters called Spoonheads. (My mind kept bouncing back and forth between playing Soundgarden’s “Spoonman” and Phish’s “Fluffhead.”) Yet this isn’t a fast moving episode. The motion is rather pedestrian and the dialogue between the Doctor and Clara is turned down from what we’ve seen previously in ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS and THE SNOWMEN. There seems to be a determined effort on writer Steven Moffat’s part to give us Clara the Normal Girl rather than Clara the Super Girl, and I’ll be honest, I find that a little disappointing.

Look, Clara is still a fantastic character and Jenna-Louise Coleman imbues her with the right amount of heart, intelligence, cheek, and charm. Had I never seen ASYLUM or SNOWMEN, I’m sure I would be equally as in love with her as I am having seen those episodes. But I liked that she wasn’t normal. I liked that she could talk fast and sharp and that her intelligence hid a naive underside who never thought to ask how she was able to make her souffles.

What we get of the “official” Clara Oswald clever, but normal girl who is, in no way, the Doctor’s equal.

Until she magically is.

Clara is a normal girl serving as an unofficial nanny to a family in contemporary London. She’s a friend of the family who happened to be staying with them when the family’s mother passed away, and she’s been living with them for the past year, helping them with daily activities as they help her mature. Clara has a wonderful book entitled “101 Places to See” which she intends to fill up with her travels. These travels have been postponed while staying with the family because she won’t leave them as long as they need her. This year has clearly given her time to mature because how could it not? She’s helping to care for the kids and the house while careful not to try to be the kid’s replacement mother.

While all of this is going on, the Doctor is sitting with some monks back in 1207 thinking on the “Impossible Girl” who’s died twice already. The monks inform him that “the bells of Saint John are ringing,” which turns out to mean that the phone on the outside of the TARDIS (which is hidden away underground) is ringing. The Doctor answers it and it’s Clara, who’s trying to figure out where the internet went. The Doctor doesn’t realize it’s her, at first, and it isn’t until the family’s daughter tells Clara their internet password – RYCBAR: Run You Clever Boy and Remember – that he immediately takes off to find her.

Couple things here. One, I love, love, love the idea of the Doctor hanging out with the monks in 1207, but it is kinda silly. He’s got a time machine and a sonic screwdriver – you’re telling me he can’t point and zap some government records to find her? But whatever, the visual is cool and maybe he just needed time to ponder the mysteries of the lovely Miss Oswald’s penchant for dying. Two, I do like how Clara’s other lives are being mirrored in this life. She’s computer illiterate at the start of the episode, but after being downloaded by the Spoonheads into their computer, she gets an upgrade so that she becomes wicked smaht, kid, like she was in ASYLUM. Additionally, she’s working as a nanny, mirroring her time with the Latimers in Victorian London, and in this episode we see where she gets the “Oswin” moniker.

So often in Moffat’s run there are seemingly important ideas tossed into a show only to be quickly tossed out of everyone’s mind. I like that he’s already circling back on himself here, showing that there’s a resonance from ASYLUM and SNOWMEN at play. When you toss in the reveal that Richard E. Grant is playing the Great Intelligence, which builds off his role as Dr. Simeon in SNOWMEN, maybe (just maybe) we’re going to get the grand narrative of Steven Moffat play out before our eyes this time around.

While BELLS doesn’t fly, there is a lot of really good, really smart stuff going on. The relationship between the Doctor and Clara isn’t white hot, but it’s on its way. Clara is, of course, a little weirded out by the arrival of a monk to her house but what I really love is that she lets us in on the fact that she trusts the Doctor before she lets him in on it. We can see that she’s warming to him after he saves her from the Spoonhead upload but she doesn’t stop giving him a hard time. While it is a bit disappointing that she’s awed by the TARDIS being bigger on the inside (instead of cleverly pointing out that it’s smaller on the outside as she did in SNOWMEN), she still gets the better of him through romantic and sexual insinuations that make him uncomfortable, such as her repeated reference to the TARDIS as a “Snog Box.” She’s still a young woman who thinks fast, like when she notices that the strange girl inside her house is actually the girl from the cover of the book one of the family’s kids was reading.

Ah, the book. Let’s talk about that book. It’s called Summer Falls. Heard of it? No? That’s understandable, but maybe you’ve heard of the author, one Amelia Williams.

It’s a nice, subtle touch by Moffat to indicate to us that the former Amelia Pond who grew up to be Amy Pond who got married and sent back in time to become Amelia Williams did have a life of her own. There’s also a nice reference in the dialogue when Clara asks the kid what chapter he’s on, and she tells him Chapter 11 will be better than Chapter 10 because he’ll end up crying.

It’s the growing relationship between the Doctor and Clara that makes this episode good. The plot is rather basic and solved ridiculously easily. It’s got a bit of the ARMY OF GHOSTS/DOOMSDAY vibe to it, with sharply dressed business people doing evil things and taking over people’s bodies, and the conclusion is literally as simple as Miss Kislet, the Head Evil Woman saying, “You can’t download Clara now that she’s fully uploaded,” and the Doctor saying, “Yes, I can.” There’s some inventive action, though, with the TARDIS jumping into a falling plane, and a clever ending with the Doctor sending the Definitely Not Called a Ganger or a Teselecta But Effectively the Same Exact Narrative Thing copy of himself after Miss Kislet.

Matt Smith is fantastic and I fear that he’s already reached that point of awesome dependability that his performance can be overlooked because it’s so steady that it’s easier for people to concentrate on the storm happening around him than on what he brings to the table. I wish he wasn’t so concerned about Clara’s safety because it does add a bit of a bubble to his logic about taking her with him. It’s less humane but potentially more interesting if he looked at Clara more as a puzzle rather than a person needing protection, but Clara’s willingness to give him cheek over things should keep the balance right.

There’s plenty of unanswered questions, of course, beyond the mystery of Clara Oswin Oswald. I’ve given my Crackpot Theory before (most fully in the LET’S KILL HITLER review) that I believe Moffat’s ultimate revelation will be that the Time Lords are behind all of the Doctor’s troubles, but in the short term, we’ve got the Great Intelligence put in place in SNOWMEN and then used again here as the Big Bad for Series 7b. As I discussed on the Earth Station Who podcast last week, I think we’re going to find the Cybermen have a strong connection to Clara, given the placement of “their” episode as the penultimate episode of Series 7. Moffat charged Neil Gaiman with making the Cybermen scary again, so maybe they’re the army of the Great Intelligence who will outstrip their creator.

The more enticing mystery brought up by this episode is who gave Clara the phone number of the TARDIS to call in the first-

Yeah, I know. It’s River.

THE BELLS OF SAINT JOHN is not an all-time great episode, but it is a really solid, really mature episode with lots of small things to appreciate on multiple viewings. My favorite moment in the episode comes when the Doctor and Clara are on his motorcycle and he answers her question about why they’re on a bike by saying, “I don’t take the TARDIS into battle,” and she replies, “Because it’s made of wood?”

Love it. Can’t wait for THE RINGS OF AKHATEN.

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When he’s not reviewing DOCTOR WHO, Mark Bousquet is doing some creative writing himself. He is the author of multiple novels and collections, including the recently released The Haunting of Kraken Moor, Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

DOCTOR WHO: Winter is Coming in the Guise of THE SNOWMEN

“THE SNOWMEN” – Series 7, Episode 6, Story 231 – Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Saul Metzstein – It’s Christmas time and new Companion time! Only, Christmas doesn’t have a lot to do with the story and the new Companion is .. well … you didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you? Because Sometimes (All Times?) Moffat Just Can’t Help Himself.

In my head, Steven Moffat sits at his typewriter (because as we learned from Stephen J. Cannell, all TV writers use a typewriter) with 8 billion ideas for every episode. Knowing this is too many, he spends a tortured fortnight (because he’s British) locked in his home office and pares and cuts and postpones 7,999,986 of these ideas. Congratulating himself on this massive success, Moffat then sits down to write his script in one long, fevered creative release. He sleeps for several days, wakes up, and reads his script. He is surprised to discover that of those 7,999,986 discarded idea, two or five or eight of those discarded ideas somehow ended up in the script. Realizing he should exorcise at least half of them, he realizes (having slept for several days) he needs breakfast and justifies not fixing the script by reminding himself that cutting 7,999,984 or 7,999,981 or 7,999,978 ideas is pretty darn good, so-

Sniff. Sniffsniffsniff.

Is that a souffle cooking downstairs?

Make that 7,999,977 ideas cut.

There is a whole lot to like about the 2012 DOCTOR WHO Christmas special, THE SNOWMEN, but there are just enough little things that either do not work or alter things that were working or are simply different that I can hear the negative complaints coming from the ether. To be straight, if you have not enjoyed the Moffat/Smith Era, there is nothing here to suggest that you’re going to like the back-half of Season 7. I’m sure this won’t stop a good many of you from tuning in every week just to have something to complain about, and there’s nothing I can do about that. We’re all free to spend our time as we choose, after all.

I’ve talked from time to time about the differences in how enjoyable we find episodes that are new versus episodes that are old. I had plenty of issues with Season 6, but when I watch the season now, I find I like it better than I did at the time. Some episodes simply work better as 99 cent back issues, as opposed to four dollar contemporary buys. When I review Classic Who, I’m much more forgiving than I am of this week’s episode. I’ve tried to watch every Season 7 episode twice before reviewing it.

All of which is prelude to saying that THE SNOWMEN is a very good story, but I fully admit that I liked it more the second time than I did the first time. In my initial viewing, the negative aspects stood out more than the positive ones. At the end of the episode, I was happy with what I had seen, but like most of my Christmas gifts this year, I was also left wanting a bit more. Watching it again allowed me to appreciate the finer moments more than the downer moments, but it also made clear what I alluded to at the start of this reaction – that sometimes Moffat is a bit too clever for his own good for a showrunner of a program with a highly speculative and critical fanbase. After a half-season of mini movies, it looks like we’re back to the Season 6 idea of episodes being chapters of a novel rather than individual specials.

Now, there’s no definite indication that we’re going to get one continuous story – only that the characters and plots here will continue. (I’m guessing the Great Intelligence will be behind the new Cybermen, and maybe several more villains that show up this season.) We might very well be back to the Russell T. Davies “Bad Wolf Method,” where largely stand-alone episodes are punctuated by singular nods to a larger arc. THE SNOWMEN is something of a Rorschach test in this regard because even though we’ve known for a good long while that SNOWMEN was going to introduce Jenna-Louise Coleman as the new Companion, and even though Moffat offered an early season surprise by having her show up in ASYLUM OF THE DALEKS and then dying, she shows up and promptly dies again.

This is obviously intentional and the “Impossible Woman” angle is clearly a road this program is going to take, so on the one hand we can say, “Cool, here’s the new overall story arc,” or we can say, “Really? She dies again?”

In a year or two or five we’ll know how the Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara Oswin Oswald story turns out and we’ll be able to see how ASYLUM and SNOWMEN fit into the greater whole. For now, I will admit to being more disappointed than intrigued by this double death, but only because I was so enjoying this 1892 version of COO. Of course, I really liked the ASYLUM version of COO, too. (Are we all going to start calling her COO? Is that going to be a thing?) I liked how the first half of Season 7 just told stories and let the overall arc develop in the background, and I was ready to get Clara aboard the TARDIS and be off on more singularly-driven episodes rather than another long arc.

And let me stop myself by saying that we have no idea how the back-half of Season 7 is going to play out, so how much time you spend worrying about it is really on you, not the show. There’s a preview trailer that plays at the end of the episode where we can see Clara’s double death is a story point but we won’t know the emphasis until those episodes hit the air.

So do you really want to take the double death and complain about where the show is going when we don’t know?

Much more than RTD’s approach to being Doctor Who Overlord, Moffat’s showrunning has invited the audience to hypothesize about what’s coming, and an episode like SNOWMEN runs the same risk that the episodes in Season 6 ran in that the speculation about what’s not revealed can occupy more time in the audience’s mind than the story we actually just watched.

As I mentioned above, there is a lot to like about THE SNOWMEN, but everything that I liked came in bits and pieces. Where SNOWMEN is lacking is in the overall story. There’s a good story here about how an alien consciousness known as the Great Intelligence is using snow to manipulate a lonely little boy throughout his life in their hostile takeover attempt, but I don’t think Moffat really wants to tell that story. It feels like Moffat is far more interested in the Doctor/Clara dynamic, which is what I wanted him to be interested in. But he’s also got subplots spinning about the Doctor playing all Mr. Lonely Heart, about the returning detective agency of the Silurian Vastra and her human wife Jenny, and now their butler/helper Strax the Sontaran. These three appeared in A GOOD MAN GOES TO WAR and it’s nice to see them back, but Moffat seems more interested in them than the overall story about the Snowmen, too.

When SNOWMEN is simply reveling in the already fantastic dynamic between the Doctor and Clara, SNOWMEN works beautifully.

When SNOWMEN is simply reveling in the highly enjoyable dynamic between the Doctor and Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, SNOWMEN works beautifully.

But when SNOWMEN spends time with the actual story of the carnivorous snow, the Great Intelligence (voiced by Ian McKellan), and Dr. Simeon, SNOWMEN feels a bit bored with itself.

Based on this episode and the trailer, we know that all of these characters and plots are coming back. When it comes to Clara, Vastra, Jenny, and Strax, I’m all for it. I absolutely love the idea touched on here that the Doctor, grumpy after the events of THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN, has set up permanent shop in 1892 London. He’s got the TARDIS parked in the clouds with an invisible staircase leading down to the ground. Vastra and Jenny are serving as the real life inspirations for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Along with Strax, they serve as the Doctor’s pseudo surrogates on Earth. Eleven is bound and determined to not get off his cloud and help anyone anymore because after 1100 years he’s mad that the universe doesn’t care about him and took the Ponds away from him.

Story points like that get old for me really fast. We know the Doctor isn’t going to sit up there forever, so why even introduce a plot like that if you’re not going to do anything with it? Right from the start, it’s clear that the Doctor enjoys helping out and enjoys his initial back-and-forth with Clara, so why do we have to sit through him insisting he doesn’t want to help?

Does it make narrative sense? Yes.

Do I want to watch it? No.

I’d be totally willing to watch a half-season of this set-up, though, because it works better stretched out than condensed. The image of the TARDIS sitting in the clouds with that staircase leading down to Earth is phenomenal, and the interplay between the Doctor, Vastra, Jenny, and Strax is thoroughly enjoyable. Give me a Doctor needing time to get over the Ponds, parking himself on Earth and in Victorian London, solving crimes with those three as he slowly warms up to Clara, and I’m queuing up early for every episode. Eleven’s got an old soul and he just seems to fit perfectly in Victorian London, and I had a good bit of fun watching Clara lead a double life, both as a barmaid and a Governess.

I’m trying not to get over-excited about the prospect of Clara as a Companion because in Ms. Coleman’s first two episodes she has been beyond fantastic. I love love love her intelligence, her rapid-fire style of talking, and her relationship with the Doctor. I could have done without the kissing scene, but the scene on the roof between her and the Doctor was as good as any scene between the Doctor and a Companion since Donna Noble was calling the TARDIS her temporary home. The Doctor and future Companion make their way to the roof and the Doctor challenges Clara to come up with a plan to escape the ice woman that’s at the window behind him. She tells him he already knows his plan, then uses the umbrella to pull down the invisible ladder.

This leads to Clara seeing the interior of the TARDIS for the first time, which brings up another one of those moments that people can potentially focus on more than the episode, itself. Which is this:

The TARDIS has a new interior. Gone is the steampunk-inspired console room and the copper walls and in it’s place we have a more conventional and, yes, more boring interior. Where the relaunch interiors have largely seemed chaotic, the new console room feels very much structured and planned. The console rooms during the Nine, Ten, and Eleven eras felt much more organic than Eleven’s newest model. You can see the original console’s design in the latest console, and the walls give a nod to the original design, too. We’ve still got plenty of funky, modern devices sprinkled around the console and we’ve still got stairs leading away from the console (I don’t know why I love that so much, but I do).

The new console room, the new opening titles (with a nod to the cut-out face of Classic Who lore!), the reworked theme song … my guess is that some people will absolutely hate them, but also that those bad vibes will be largely gone by the time the back-half of the season debuts.

Whenever that is.

The Doctor gives Clara a key to the TARDIS, but then she’s pulled outside by the ice woman and falls to her death.

Whoops.

You could see the rug being pulled out just because the Doctor was a bit too quick in giving her the key – you could just feel that Moffat was overplaying his hand in one direction in an attempt to make the swerve have a great impact.

After Clara’s death and temporary rebirth, the serial takes a nosedive in quality because there’s no more fun with the Doctor pretending to be Sherlock Holmes, no more funny interplay between the Doctor and Strax, and no more of Clara refusing to do what the Doctor tells her. We’ve got a story to wrap up and it’s a rather clumsy, ineffective, needlessly twisty end with pointless swerves and Clara’s death.

The only part of the ending that I liked was the revelation that the Doctor was unaware that Clara was the same/”same” woman from ASYLUM until she first mentions souffles, and then when she repeats her line telling the Doctor to “run, you clever boy, and remember.” The Doctor is genuinely intrigued by the same woman dying twice and he’s back with the twinkle in his eye and the spring in his step. It’s a good leap into the rest of the season but it casts SNOWMEN as being less about Christmas as it does being a prequel. I like my Christmas stories to be about Christmas, not just set at Christmas.

(Though to call myself out, I just published a kid’s Christmas story that isn’t as Christmassy as I like, either. It happens.)

There are so many great individual moments in THE SNOWMEN (and top-notch work from director Saul Metzstein) that it’s a shame the larger story didn’t quite come together as well as I would have liked. It’s still a highly enjoyable, if not great, episode, though, and I’m thrilled to have the Doctor back and Ms. Coleman along for the ride.

Even if she’s not official, yet.

Yet.

Merry Christmas, all!
________

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